Breaking the Losing Spiral and Embracing Growth in TradingTrading can be exhilarating, but it also has its emotional traps.
In this post, I’ll guide you through understanding a common psychological pitfall—the spiral—and how you can develop the mindset of a winning trader. Whether you’re new to trading or looking to refine your approach, cultivating the right mental framework is crucial for long-term success.
The Dangerous Spiral
Let’s start by exploring what I call the spiral. This negative feedback loop often begins with a single, big, unexpected loss. Losses are an inevitable part of trading, but how you respond to them defines your trajectory as a trader.
Here’s how the spiral unfolds:
1. The Trigger: A Big Loss
A significant, unexpected loss can shake your confidence. Instead of pausing and reassessing, many traders feel an overwhelming urge to recover their losses immediately.
2. Revenge Trading
Driven by fear and frustration, you might rush into trades without your usual standards for quality. You lower your threshold and settle for mediocre setups, hoping to win back your money quickly.
3. Secondary Losses
These poorly planned trades often lead to further losses. Your equity curve, which may have been steady or climbing, begins to drop in sharp, painful steps.
4. Desperation
As losses mount, desperation sets in. Your judgment becomes clouded, and you’re no longer trading with a clear, strategic mindset.
6. Diminishing Accuracy
Emotional decision-making reduces your accuracy. Trades that might once have had a 70% success rate drop to 50% or even lower.
7. Bigger Losers, Total Losses
The combination of reduced accuracy and poor setups leads to larger average losses. Your total losses grow, and your account balance shrinks.
8. Loss of Confidence and Account Size
At this stage, the psychological damage is profound. You’re not just losing money—you’re losing belief in yourself. If your account balance drops significantly, the challenge of recovery becomes even steeper. For instance, a 50% account loss requires a 100% gain just to break even.
This spiral is self-inflicted, but the good news is that it’s avoidable.
Reversing the Cycle: The Positive Feedback Loop
Instead of spiraling downward, let’s focus on creating a positive feedback loop. This approach builds momentum in the right direction and fosters long-term growth:
1. High-Accuracy Trading
Prioritize quality over quantity. Only take trades that meet your well-defined criteria. This discipline lays the foundation for success.
2. Strong Profit-to-Loss Ratio
By focusing on high-quality setups, your average winners should outweigh your average losers. This creates a cushion for occasional losses and sustains your confidence.
3. Confidence Boost
Consistent, profitable trading reinforces your belief in your strategy and decision-making.
4. Scaling Up
With growing confidence and a larger account balance, you can responsibly increase your trade size. This amplifies your profits while maintaining discipline.
5. Compounding Success
The cycle repeats: High accuracy leads to higher profits, greater confidence, and continued account growth.
Key Takeaways for Building a Winning Mindset
Being a successful trader isn’t just about technical skills or aggressive strategies—it’s about mastering your emotions and mindset. Here are some tips to keep you on the path to growth:
Accept Losses as Part of the Process
Losses are inevitable. Instead of reacting emotionally, treat them as opportunities to learn and improve.
Step Back After a Loss
When you experience a big loss, resist the urge to trade immediately. Take a break to regain clarity and recalibrate your approach.
Maintain High Standards
Never compromise on the quality of your trades, even under pressure. Sticking to your strategy is critical for long-term success.
Focus on the Long Game
Trading is a marathon, not a sprint. Avoid the trap of trying to recover losses in a single day or trade.
Celebrate Small Wins
Recognize and appreciate your progress, no matter how small. Every step forward reinforces a winning mindset.
The Final Word
The mindset of a winning trader is built on discipline, patience, and emotional resilience. By avoiding the spiral and fostering a positive feedback loop, you can grow your trading account steadily and confidently. Remember, success in trading isn’t just about making money—it’s about staying in the game long enough to let your skills and strategy pay off.
Losingtrades
The real reason you aren't profitable, YETHumble yourself and come to realize that:
1. Nothing is on YOUR time
2. You don't know everything
3. You cannot win every single trade
Most traders struggle in 1 or all of these areas and thus it stops them from actually progressing forward.
Pride cometh before the fall.....
5 Tips on How To Survive a Losing StreakIf you can handle a losing streak well; you are better than 75% of traders. So here are 5 tips on how to survive a losing streak :
1. Don't trade smaller - Very controversial opinion. If you feel too much negative emotions to trade then - don't trade. Take a break for a few hours or days. But if you reduce the position size then it will be much harder to get back on track. Let me give an example:
You lose 5 trades all with 1% risk. You are now down -5 RR (Risk to reward) = in this case -5% on your account.
If you now reduce your position size and take 0.5% risk per trade. You would need to make back 10RR to get to your initial balance. This can be very demotivating. So trust your system en keep on trading as you planned it.
2. Don't focus on the outcome of one or a few trades . It is a statistical fact that you are going to have losing streaks some times and it's important not to take it too personally. The market isn't out to get you. Try to detach emotionally from the trades and focus on the bigger picture. Focus on things like: did you follow your rules and strategy? If you did - then you did all you could and there is no need to talk down on yourself.
3. Learn from your mistakes - mistakes are opportunities for growth. You can do this by always documenting and analysing your trades, eventually you may see a pattern in your losing trades. For example, you may see that the trades you make during London session tend to hit your stop loss. Sometimes a little tweak is all you need to give you the winning edge.
4. Take a break and go for a walk - clear your head and get some fresh air. It's amazing what a little bit of sunshine and movement can do for your mood and perspective. It also makes sure that you don't do stupid things to make back the money you just lost.
5. Don't give up - every trader experiences losses at some point. It's important to stay motivated and not let a losing streak discourage you. Keep a positive attitude and remember that tomorrow is a new day with new opportunities.
The psychological side of trading is the hardest but most important one. Without the right psychology in place you can never be successful.
Let me know what you think and I wish you all a successful day.
What I Do After I Lose A TradeI noticed I’m still in AUDNZD, which is in good profit. Price made a new high, and my first action was to move the trade to break even. At the same time, I noticed I lost a trade on NZDCHF which I set a pending order for this morning.
What I did next was a reaction to the loss. I immediately sought a trade on a currency pair that was not on my list.
Once I did that, I heard a voice saying, STOP DOING THAT!
This is a repeated action I do when I lose a trade. Instead of feeling the loss, I try to medicate it by looking for something else to do.
As soon as I realized this, I wrote that down as a limiting belief and then wrote down what I believe about the market.
Limiting Belief: Losing a trade makes me feel like I need to look for a trade on another pair to make my money back.
Action to take: take a slight loss. It’s better than letting a losing trade run.
Belief: Small losses tell you the price has reversed and to be patient to wait for the following setup on the same currency pair.
Belief: The market changes. I have to adapt quickly because the price movement will change, which means every trade is unique.
Belief: Make trading a fun puzzle to figure out. It will become overwhelming if I work on too many puzzles simultaneously.
What I noticed last was how I felt. Usually, I feel a tight pinch in my chest before I get on my charts. Its anxiety. I didn’t feel it this morning. I felt relaxed.
After dealing with years of anxiety I can feel it decreasing the more I write out my thoughts and beliefs and see how they are what I trade.
Experiencing today's lose I had no feeling just a reaction I will work hard to not do again.
What reactions do you have when you lose a trade. What are thoughts and feelings? If negative what can you now begin doing that will help you adapt to price movement with a clear mind and well thought out actions?
If you found value in this shared moment of my trading journey please like this post and comment. You're not alone in this trading world. Let's talk it out.
3 Things To Do After You Lose A TradeWe have all been there. You analyze a trade setup. You know how much you're going to risk on a trade. You enter the trade just to come back to your chart and find you've been stopped out.
It's not fun. It sucks. You thought the setup would work because you followed you rules. The thing is, the market is the market.
In my early stages of trading I hated being stopped out. My reasoning was because. I had no idea how to make up for my loss.
I thought if I just plotted more lines and levels on my chart I could enter the trade again and make my money back.
The problem I kept running into was I had no idea why I lost the trade or how to handle my feelings. I also had no real plan on how to adjust to the price change.
I honestly thought my levels or trend lines didn't work. It was deeper than that.
What changed?
I had to change the way I viewed the market and my next steps to recover my loss. Not only that, I had to learn how to be "ok" with losing money.
I created a 3 Step Process that would increase my probability of winning my next trade. Because we are a trading family, I thought I'd share it with you.
Step 1: Access my previous trade
You hear this all the time, "I made a mistake thats why I lost the trade." The true question is did you really make a mistake or did you follow your trading rules?
When I follow my rules no mistakes are made. When I lose a trade that can mean 1 thing. The market reversed. This leads me to step 2.
Step 2: Change my bias
In the book The Unknown Market Wizards by Jack Schwager, I heard the most beautiful and profound statement by one of the wizard traders. He said, "I realized I have a right to change my mind about my trade at any time."
I can't tell you how that made me feel. I've been doing that all along, but this market wizard summed up my actions in just one sentence.
When I'm stopped out that means I have to change my mid about the direction of the trade. I made being stopped out so simple so I won't confuse the next action I should take. That leads me to step 3, update my chart and adapt to the new price movement.
Step 3: Update and Adapt
I have a no nonsense rule and that is to stop trading in 1 direction if I'm stopped out. Go opposite. I'm a true trend trader. I don't naturally trade against the trend. It gets me in trouble.
So at the first sign of trouble, I adapt.
See, USDCHF was in a downtrend.
I sold the trade at 0.92835( sell limit) and overnight I was stopped out. It happened so fast and just as fast as I was stopped out, I knew I had to become the buyer.
My Mental
In the recent past, being stopped out would have spooked me. Now, its making me want to come back to the charts to face my fear. I used to have a fear of success and failure. Now I have a hunger to want to succeed and learn.
Putting on trades is a bit more fun since I've began working with pending orders. They challenge me. Especially in situations when price reverses and I'm stopped out.
I pray you gained new insight and a key takeaway on what you can do next after you lose a trade.
Just remember, losing a trade doesn't make you a loser, it makes you a trader.
Comment down below what your takeaway was. I'd appreciate it if you could like the post. It helps boost my Trading view reputation. Much love,
Shaquan
Successful trading is about managing risk, not avoiding it. Hello All,
This is the first idea I am publishing in Tradingview and I decided to select the topic of risk management, specially after the dramatic increase and subsequent decrease on prices which we have seen in TLRY and other weed stocks this week, all mostly happening in 48 hours.
If you just started trading and got involved on weed stocks, you probably been though a very painful experience because a lot of your precious money is probably gone. As trading becomes more and more popular, many new people join the market but without understanding the very basics of it and without considering risk management.
If you are one of those new joiners, I strongly advise you to improve your knowledge about risk management. here some basic rules:
1. Set a stop-loss!
2. Position size = (risk*budget) How much money you invest.
3. Entry point : When to buy
4. Exist point: When to sell.
To put it very simply, never buy a stock because it has gone up or sell one because it has gone down! I think the case of TLRY is a classic example of this.
So, what I described here here is just very basic. You should and must educate yourself about risk management, otherwise trust me you will regret your experience as trader.
PS: If you are new to this, I recommend you to read a very old but classic book about investment called "The intelligent investor" by Benjamin Graham. Let me be very clear that trading is not the same than investing. Which are you. really?
Have a good weekend!
StupidityHey, got a few thoughts about stupidity. I want to make an idea about logic too which is something I guess few people have, but it is eliminatory.
For the idea about logic you'll have to wait. Here I will gloat about some very easy calls people disagreed with and have now been proven right, and I will also shame dumb people.
Ah the sweet smell of victory.
Now that the US election is over Black Lives Matter is complaining that democrats are ignoring them, they are not answering their messages, they are not inviting them to talks, and democrats are cracking down on "defund the police". It was so obvious this would happen. All the people that disagreed and argued deserve to be shamed, if I find one I'm rubbing it in their face. So obvious.
Sanofi, the company famous for sending a dengue vaccine to the Philippines which resulted in the few hundred kids that took it dropping dead, has announced their covid vaccine would AT BEST be ready for the end of 2021. Meanwhile Pfizer vaccine that we know nothing about have started being injected this week. Pfizer just that performant, great job. Pfizer vaccine which the long term effects of are totally unknown has apparently made known the short term effects and correct me if I am wrong but I heard they were much bigger than usual and that it was worrying (lots of big headaches and more) oh and of course I already said it this is official infertility for women (and lactating women should not take it).
But hey who cares about these small side effects we are too many humans on the planet right? Absolute braindead apes said so so it must be true. Bill Gates, a man that got lucky being at the right place at the right time once and stole an idea, then later one bought jpegs on the internet (genius!), a man that loses billions starting an idiotic business of buying paint pictures on the internet knows best. Also all the other scumbags that are ALWAYS WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING. These guys are as bad as Roubini and just like Roubini they are persuaded they know best!
Roubini gets invited to the Senate and they ask him for advice, a man bearish on Bitcoin since $10 and bearish on the stock market since 2009. This clown perma bear has a mental breakdown each time BTC makes a new ath and is constantly in denial and finding excuses. But at least he did not invest billions & all his time into collecting rare pepes.
Other things on which I will be proven right with 100% certainty:
A tremendous amount of people are too stupid to talk too.
Studies and data meta analysis keeps showing that hydroxychloroquine azithromycin zinc reduces death but they're literally too stupid to even understand that sentence "ooga booga Trump said inject bleach", "I'm rly smart otorities sayed hydroxychloroquine no gud". NO ONE SAID ON ITS OWN.
1 paper claims that H+A + Zinc is 1.5 times as effective as H+A alone.
Hydroxychloroquine is supposed to push Zinc into the cell.
SO YES if you give yoghurts and peas to a patient or a glucose transfusion and no Zinc, the effect of boosting the absorption of zinc by HCQ is useless.
I think these ape brains do not comprehend that nx0 = 0 no matter n.
And paracetamol is more toxic...
Another thing everyone just ignores is that we saw nearly everyone with a Vit D deficiency die and nearly no one with sufficient levels die...
Vitamin D and Zinc make huge differences but they get completely ignored.
Planet of the apes. Let's wear paper masks and avoid sunlight instead.
This guy made an idea about how buying IPOS was dumb:
Hey so today earlier, or yesterday, Peter McCormack, a guy that is what like 50? He's been in crypto for years and BTC is at ath.
He took a loan where he says (if he knows how to count) "$46,250 loan today at 7.9% and bought 2.55 #bitcoin. By 2026 I will have to pay back $57,806.85."
So... how... is this guy still poor? He is lying to bait people into doing this? People fall for this? Or is he actually broke and buying at ath and taking crap loans?
According to the UK regulators crypto "investors" lose tremendous money. I would be willing to bet that me, a perma bear during the entire bear market, that kept saying BTC was a ponzi going to zero, and crypto is just a "seldom side hussle" for me, did far better on the upside alone, than all these Bitcoin obsessed fomoers :)
But how are people so incredibly bad at investing? In particular short term.
Crypto investors = awful.
Stock investors = awful (thinking of tik tok & robinhood especially).
Forex investors = 🤮
It's not about finding a secret, it's not about doing something special, it's about not making horrific mistakes and not being a complete idiot.
Honestly I am amazed at how bad almost everyone is. Really you keep shorting up 300 points then rush to close it when it dips 50 points?
Spend all this time chasing reversal then close at the speed of light the instant it starts to maybe reverse. It's not even a big move up then small down, it's a tiny move down, not even .236, like a micro blip. Losers are position trades and winners are scalps lol. They're all smarter than all the billionaires I guess. And they keep losing but they keep doing the same thing.
It's just so stupid 😆
Hey did you know that Jeff Besos has a fortune of 200 billion? There are 7 billion humans. So he could give each one 1 billion and still have 193 billion left! He could end world hunger!
- From a mouth breathing tik tok investor.
People are saying "his heart is in the right place". Haha this is like saying a fat girl has a beautiful personality it's even worse it means it is so horrifingly bad you can't bring yourself to be honest.
Believe it or not, according to Bloomberg wealth, the financial advice that goes viral on TikTok isn't always good for you
www.bloomberg.com
Before I continue shaming a few tik tok comedians, a quick break: Carlos Matos made a video recently.
He is looking for women 25 to 35 to create a large bisexual love home.
One tik tok investor thinks it is a great time to short the stock market. Why? Because the bank have no more money (you know, the bank that print infinite money and expanded MZM by 20 or 30% like it was nothing this year).
Another tik tok intellectual says that hey it's to late to become a millionaire with just 44 cents through Bitcoin, but with Ripple, it is possible.
Yet another tik tok scholar is speculating that BRK bought 15 million shares of Tesla.
An 11 year old prodigee is certain EV are very early, EV is a revolution (has been for 200 years but I don't think he knows this), and price up up up.
I better watch my back, young hungry tik tok geniusses are going to create massive competition for me, I am shaking in fear they'll take my place.
A wise tik tok investor - that took an early moderna vaccine while being 25, priorities - teaches us that lockdowns don't matter to the EURUSD.
The MACD matters, the ALL are bullish (someone told him they all give the same info?), his target? 1.60.
Oh, I see Robinhood plans on making an IPO. Can't wait.
A math prodigee is giving some advice on how to turn 1000 into 20,000: Nothing more simple! All it takes is use FAANG stocks to make 2.3% a day which is 7% a week which is 28% a month. Excellent math skills and genius trick, why did I not think of it?!
Some amazing traders posted a video of them screaming after their ultra leverage options went deep into the red. Tik Tok is a goldmine of knowledge and higher thinking. I go watch each time I want to challenge myself.
A brilliant financeer managed to turn his 25000 into 1 million great job! What he did was buy $25,000 worth of shares at $90. The price climbed to 130 so he is now a millionaire. Since $40 * 25000 = 1 million. Bam! Amazing logic & math skills.
Do you need to be good at maths to trade? No not at all. But a whole lot of creatures are so unbelievably garbage at the most basic maths - or just thinking - they do not have the required math skill of about ZERO.
Glad we got so many idiots to laugh at when markets are closed.
Does Trading Really Work?I’m Markus Heitkoetter and I’ve been an active trader for over 20 years.
I often see people who start trading and expect their accounts to explode, based on promises and hype they see in ads and e-mails.
They start trading and realize it doesn’t work this way.
The purpose of these articles is to show you the trading strategies and tools that I personally use to trade my own account so that you can grow your own account systematically. Real money…real trades.
Does Trading Really Work?
What I want to talk about today is, does trading really work?
Because sometimes it feels that you’re going one step forward and then two steps back, doesn’t it?
Yesterday, Rosemarie shared in one of my private Facebook groups. She asked:
“How is everybody doing? I got out last Friday losing most of my gains, and yesterday I got stopped out of a loss during the same day and today I put on three trades, two long and one short, and they’re all in the red. Is everybody in the same boat or staying out of the market?”
What is going on here? Does what Rosemarie shared sound familiar? This is where sometimes it really feels that you’re not moving.
And let me show you what’s even worse.
Traders will often look at some charts for big percentage movers and say, “Oh my gosh!” and will get in too late.
Usually it’s penny stocks for companies like CARV . Very recently this stock went from $2 to $22.
Another example of a stock that did this was COHN which was trading at $4 and then skyrocketed.
These two stocks were up 300% & 137%.
When you see this, you’re wondering, “Why can’t I do this,” right?
They see a price spike, and buy a stock with no strategy in mind.
You see, doing something like this with penny stocks it’s like winning the lottery.
Have you ever heard of CARV before? They may have shot up, but then they came right back down.
This is what usually happens. What goes up must come down, especially when it has these parabolic moves.
2 Things Needed To Trade Successfully
So I want to share a little bit of what I have experienced in all my years of trading. You see, in order to trade and to trade successfully, you must have two things.
1. A Solid Trading Strategy
The first thing that you need is a solid trading strategy. I’ve talked about this before. What exactly do you need in a trading strategy?
What to trade
Well, first of all, a trading strategy needs to first tell you what to trade, right?
I mean, what stock, what option, what binary option, or what future market, it doesn’t really matter.
When to enter
It also has to show you when exactly to enter a trade.
When to exit
Then we need to know when to exit a trade.
When it comes to exiting you can either exit with a profit, I mean, this is why we are trading, or you’re exiting with a loss, right?
Both ways are possible here, and this is what a solid trading strategy does for you, it gives you this information.
Now, as you know, I personally like to use the PowerX Strategy.
This is the strategy that I like to trade here, and this is exactly what strategy Rosemarie is trading.
2. You Must Have Confidence In Your Strategy
Now, the second thing that you need, based on my experience, is you need to have confidence in your strategy.
We talked about this before, if you don’t have the confidence, you start chasing shiny objects, you jump from one strategy to another, from one newsletter to another, or you buy more & more tools.
At least this is what happened to me in the beginning when I was lacking confidence. So confidence is absolutely important.
Now the key question here is, “How?”
People ask me all the time:
“How do you have so much confidence in your plan?”
Well here’s my answer: I know my numbers and I know what to expect.
How to know what to expect
You see, for example, how do I know what to expect?
As I mentioned, I’m using the PoweX Strategy and I am using the PowerX Optimizer to find the best stocks and options to trade.
That is the software that I use every day I’m actually using it at night to find the best trades, and then I confirm them the next morning.
This only takes me, what, 15-35 minutes a day.
When I run the software, I look for certain stocks and I look for stocks that give me at least a 60% return on my investment, per year.
This means I’m expecting 5% per month.
Now, I’m always happy when I’m surprised in a positive way, but these are my minimum requirements.
I’m also expecting a 40% winning percentage.
These are my requirements and yours might be different, but this is what exactly I’m expecting.
A 40% winning percentage means 6 out of 10 trades are losing trades.
I also expect a profit factor of at least 3. Now, what does a profit factor of three mean?
It means that for every dollar that I lose, I expect to make at least $3 in return.
So this is my ratio, and again, yours might be completely different, but this is what I’m looking for.
So these are my expectations when trading the PowerX Strategy.
Real Results From My Trading Account
So let me show you some real results. As some of you may know, I opened a small account with tastyworks.
I put $20,000 into the account because I wanted to see how quickly can I grow this account.
I have been trading with my trading plan, on this account, and I want to explain to you exactly what happened.
These were my statistics. These results are from June 17th, and went back almost a month prior to May 19th.
I got 192 signals from the PowerX Optimizer Software in total.
I then ruled out a few stocks according to my trading plan.
I had 41 triggered and 31 filled. So this means over the past four weeks I’ve taken 31 trades.
Now out of these 31 trades, 9 trades were still open, and I closed 22 trades.
Now out of these 22 trades, I closed 6 with a profit and 16 with a loss.
Now, I’ve just covered with you what I expect, and 6 out of 22 trades is 27%.
So right now, my winning percentage is 27%.
I expect a 40% winning percentage, right? So here, the strategy was underperforming.
This is very important to understand because when you are trading a strategy, and you’re expecting a winning percentage of 40%,
it means that in the long run, based on my experience, a good number of trades to look at is 40 trades.
This is what you want to see after 40 trades.
However, I only closed 22 trades, and it’s absolutely normal for every trading strategy to have times when they’re underperforming, or when they’re overperforming.
You see, when trading, you don’t have this straight line that goes up from the lower left to the upper right, it doesn’t work this way.
There will be dips, here & there, and you will see that sometimes it’s just going sideways, maybe even down, and then it takes off.
So at this time my account was definitely underperforming, but over the next few weeks, I expected it to overperform.
At this time, the account was underperforming, because the markets were nervous about what was going on with the virus.
During these trades, markets were definitely nervous due to uncertainty with the rising number of new cases of Covid-19.
I mean, we had a spike in cases in Florida, Texas, Arizona, but then overall, it seemed that our economy was rebounding, so these were definitely tricky times to trade.
So this is why my account was underperforming, but there is more to it than that because again, the winning percentage is only one of the important factors.
What I also expect is that I have a profit factor of 3 to 1.
I was not quite there yet because my average losing trade was $200.
This is very important to note here that I was keeping my losses small here.
Think about it, this was a $20,000 account. So $200 per losing trade is 1% and the average winning trade is $433.
So my loss after four weeks of trading was only $600.
I told you I’d give it to you straight, and even though I’m really good at trading, I wish I could tell you that I’m always winning, but after four weeks of trading here, I had a loss of $600 in a $20,000 account.
This loss however is only about 3%. That’s nothing, especially if that my average winning trade was $433.
This means that one winning trade will get me close to break even, and a few more winning trades, and I’d be back up.
I want to share something else with you.
In my company, Rockwell Trading, we have a team here, and some of the team members are trading.
One of the team members who is trading is Alex, who is responsible for all the tech support for the website, and all the backend stuff.
We had a conversation through Skype about the trades he was taking at this time.
Alex said:
“I’m trading right now and I’m not doing well.”
And I said:
“Well, I’m not doing well either. Look at this. Check the stats, 22 losing trades, only 6 winning trades.”
Exactly how I explained it here in this article, to which Alex replied:
“Yes, I’m surprised you’re only down $600.”
I asked him:
“Why are you surprised? I’m keeping my losses small. This is the secret here one winning trade will bring me back to break even.”
Alex had a realization and said:
“I’m surprised that I’m only down $155 a month, and two more winning trades, and I’ll have a decent profit.”
So you see, this I believe is the key. You have to keep your losses small.
Is It Possible To Make Money Trading?
I’ve been trading for a long time. I can’t remember exactly how long, but more than 20 years. I can give you my answer.
YES, it is absolutely possible to make money with trading, and there are a few things that you need to consider.
1. Trading Is A Marathon, Not A Sprint
Number one, trading is a marathon, not a sprint.
When you see these crazy claims about “how you can turn a thousand dollars into a million dollars,” or “never have a losing trade again,” or “make 1,000%,” run away!
I mean, here, I’m as real as it gets. I’m sharing my real results with you, from one of my actual accounts.
This is one of my smaller accounts, and I have a total of 8 accounts.
The results of this account are pretty typical of all the other accounts I’m trading on.
2. Stay Focused
Number two, is it possible to make money with trading?
Yes. Stay focused. Don’t jump from one trading strategy to another one.
That is one of the big mistakes that I made in the beginning of my trading career.
I mean, this is where I started trading a strategy and then when it underperformed, as this one did, I jumped to the next trading strategy, and then I jumped to the next trading strategy.
3. Stay Disciplined
The third thing I believe is absolutely important is to stay disciplined.
Let me tell you a story really quick.
So my kids are sailing, and so we go to regattas all over the country.
A few years ago, we went to a regatta in New Orleans.
In the evening after the first day, one of the dads, Tony said:
“Hey, you know, what? Do you want to go to a casino and play, gamble a little bit?”
And I said:
“Well, not much of a gambler, but sure, why not?”
Tony and I went to a casino and we decided to play blackjack. I think we had about $500 each and, here’s what happened.
Tony had a few losing hands, and after a while, his chip pile was down to half the money that he had.
Now, I’m very conservative, as I’m really not much of a gambler, I barely know the rules of blackjack.
Well when Tony was down almost half of his money, decided for the next round he was all in.
No more discipline. All in. Does that sound familiar?
What do you think happened? It was another losing hand and so we left the casino and Tony wasn’t so happy.
This is also what I see happening to traders.
After a few losing trades, often they do something stupid.
I also did this in the beginning of my trading career.
In the beginning of my trading career I clearly said:
“You know what? After a few losing trades now let’s just increase the bet size and try to make back the money that I lost.”
Have you ever done it? Because if so, you know exactly what happens. So it is super important to stay disciplined.
How do you stay disciplined?
How do you stay focused and disciplined?
This is where we go back to having confidence.
And you see it’s a full circle.
And how do you have confidence?
By knowing what to expect and by knowing your numbers.
Has this been helpful to understand a little bit of what’s happening right now?
And if you have a losing streak, it might not necessarily be new to you.
Know what to expect and know your number.